When you’re depressed, forming relationships is a challenge. If you’re uncomfortable with who you are, it’s hard to love someone else. And it’s not like love puts an end to depression. Love helps but there is no ultimate cure.

In many ways, I’m still an awkward 14-year-old boy following a cute girl down a high school hallway, unaware how much she’ll mean to me for years to come. My illness isn’t clear to me yet either. I don’t know that shortly after finding her I’ll become a stranger to myself.

How can I picture a hospital hallway ten years later, when she visits me at my lowest and holds my hand? Or ten years after that, to today, learning that she’d found someone else?

Sometimes I need to remind that 14-year-old kid that everything will be OK. Even though we both know that’s not always true.